I knew about this but it’s never made sense to me. If I was a billionaire I’d never drive myself anywhere, particularly not if I was going to be intoxicated.
To be fair, a lot of the mega rich morons, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc are narrow geniuses (with a lot of luck). They’re just not self aware enough to know what they don’t know and they think they’re renaissance men. If the news media was continuously telling me that I was a genius, I might start to believe it too ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Having to rely on people to do things for you, even if you’re super rich, can be annoying. People that work for you take time off, get sick, so now you need other people to manage the other people to ensure that someone is always available, then you start to dislike some of those people, but managing who is around you all the time also takes effort, etc. etc. You can’t pay your way out of everything. Plus sometimes you just want to do things for yourself, and sometimes you just want to be alone.
Yes and no. At billionaire level I expect they have other people taking care of who is available, and with that a mint of money you can easily keep a backup available as well.
People like this have money. That creates a barrier between them and "other"people. With enough money you never have to think about anyone below the line.
And this is why I dislike the idiotic temporarily embarrassed billionaires most of all. They're just looking for a way to get away with all of their shitty impulses.
The problem is not them having money. The problem is they're treated differently because they have money. As if laws don't apply to them just because they have money. Their enablers are the problem.
Sadly I’ll bet this happens a lot and it is ultimately decided that it was an accident, so there is no one to blame. Honestly if I was the family I might hope for that outcome because otherwise I would love the rest of my life consumed with hatred for someone rather than seeing it as just fate.
They have well-paid paramilitary-style guards that can arrange for you to tragically fall backwards onto twelve bullets from five different guns if they ever thought you were a threat.
Probable? No, impossible? Also no. All it takes is being in the right place at the right time with the right method of killing. Too many people think Rambo or terminator when a car bomb or something like that can easily do the trick. Or poison, etc. Hell even just sniping them during a public appearance.
All except the families, I’d assume. The families they just had their representatives casually mention how it would be a shame if their children should somehow end up sold to wealthy men in Russia with particularly young tastes in girls.
This happens a LOT more often than you think. I worked with a well-connected person that killed a dude while she was drunk driving. She was not in jail at any point.
If you have heard the word “intersectionality” but didn’t know what it meant, this gives us a good example.
Feminists will say that women are not treated fairly overall, BUT if you’re a white woman, you might actually have it better than a black man. And if you’re an extremely wealthy white woman, you might even have it better than most men. All the factors combine.
It also works in reverse. Basically a gay black woman might not feel anything in common with Mrs. Walton, despite them both being women, and might easily see her as an oppressor.
Class, race, gender, sexual orientation… those are the dimensions that intersect in all of us. I’m sure there are more. Religion used to be more significant, I think. Ability. Age, perhaps. In some countries there’s a concept of caste. Maybe education level and country/city are also involved but those are not the big ones.
It just seems that class is the factor with the most effect. Also most factors are kardinal and limited, e.g. white>asian>latin>black in bigoted society. But wealth is continous and you could always be more wealthy. So it doesnt stop at being a billionaire, you could always be a 10billionaire or a 50billionaire and it will still make a difference.
Worth mentioning that wealth and class are technically two different things that happen to usually coincide. In the US the connection is nearly 1:1, but in some places like the UK there is quite a history of high class people struggling with wealth and marrying wealthy people in order to combine their wealth/class. I mention this specifically because “caste” is really just another form of class. It’s a form of class tied more to duty/work and less directly to wealth.
I saw a post once about how discrimination law doesn’t recognise combinations… so a company was found not guilty of discrimination against a black woman because they employ lots of white women as secretaries and black men as labourers, and were therefore ‘diverse’.
The single biggest difference in the treatment there is, is based on wealth: in other words, one’s wealth is the single biggest factor for discriminatory treatment there is.
Anybody genuinelly wanting to end the unfairness of descrimination on things which people did not choose would be focusing most efforts (not all, but the largest fraction) on ending or at least reducing that which is the largest and most impactful discrimination there is (and which is often a pathway through which other kinds of discrimination end up affecting people: i.e. a group is marginalized on some visible trait, so many more in it are poor, and then most of the actual suffering comes from the differentiated treatment dependening on wealth).
Instead, “strangelly”, in those countries with voting systems that enforce power dupolies, the mainstream “left”-side party (which alternates in power with the “right”-side party) will at most loudly rage against a few other discriminations, never against wealth discrimination.
I agree that class is incredibly important and yet has a chronic problem getting recognized. The American class system is more flexible and mobile than its European forebears but it’s still there. Wealth buys access to better schools, safer streets, more lenient judges, etc.
Race is also huge in America and a lot of people insist on burying it, too. Their belief is that even talking about it is racist - they still believe in the fantasy of “not seeing race,” where most of us have recognized that the true goal is for everyone to be able to have a distinct racial and cultural identity but not be penalized for it. Not for everyone to be stripped of it all and treated as blank.
Some people say race overrides all. Some people say class overrides all. Intersectionality says that they both matter, and that an extremely wealthy gay black man won’t have the same treatment as Mrs. Walton.
She really looks creepy. I guess once you’re that weathy you’re relatively isolated from authentic social interaction and start getting a little fucked in the head.
Just remember: You don’t have to shop at Walmart to support the Waltons. Your tax dollars go to the social programs that many Walmart employees are forced to depend on because Walmart won’t pay a living wage.
Getting away with murder is only one privilege of being wealthy.
Not to be an Internet edgelord, but if some billionaire killed one of my family and got away with it, I would make it my life’s mission to hunt them down and make sure they get some kind of justice.
This reminds me of that movie “Assault on Wall Street” where basically some dude goes on a killing spree and starts murdering a bunch of wall street people. Except, the guy is framed as a hero, which I assume is because it came out not too long after the 2008 financial crisis (~2013). I watched that movie in like 2017, and it felt antisocial and lunatic-ey.
I wonder if we’re at a point right now where a similar movie about going on a killing spree against billionaires would do well?
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